This work was one that I had previously begun before the lottery project began. I had recently used a canvas over the summer to do a fun project with friends. We filled up balloons with paint, tacked them to canvases, and then threw darts at the balloons to get them to explode and cover the canvas with paint. I was watching this documentary one night about the Beatles with my dad and decided that it would be fun to paint John Lennon so I did. I spent a lot of time working on this piece because it was a lot of fun for me to do. I like painting a lot of things that I am interested in so this came really easily to me. I used black and white acrylic paint on top of the splatters of color that were already there to make the piece. I had to do a lot of layers because of the paint already on the canvas and the paper that was covering the background (that was on the canvas from a previous project.) At time it was frustrating because I am not a very technical painter so I was easily angered whenever I could not get a certain part to look the way I wanted it to. I also had to deal with some of the paint peeling in spots because there have been a lot of issues with the white paint and it peeling. Overall I like the final outcome of this project. I think I am going to go back and sharpen some more of the fine details to make it exactly the way I want it but I put a lot of time and effort into it so it is a piece that I am very happy with overall.
This was the piece that I had created in the Lottery drawing. My topics were escape and landscape. My mediums were chalk pastel, band-aids, and lights. The two artists I drew were Gino Severini and Marcel Duchamp. The project wanted us to combine all these things in some way and create a work of art. What I struggled with the most was thinking of something that I could make. I ended up thinking about the stars in the sky because I really wanted a way that I could incorporate Christmas lights into the work because they are so twinkly and pretty. Starting the project I marked off spots where I would want lights to be able to shine through and painted all around those spots the sky at night using various colors. After a few layers of paint doing this I used chalk pastel on top of the paint and smudged it around to make the sky try and look more realistic as to what it does in space. Last, I covered the entire canvas in Elmer's glue and splashed paint all in it for it to dry and it created a cool bubble type effect. I went back and added more paint and pastel on top of the glue one it dried and attached lights to the back where there was white space to make the "stars" seem to glow. The most challenging aspect of this project was trying to incorporate all the various lottery drawings into the work. I spend a good deal of time brainstorming and working, but the most fun aspect of this was the actual process. I really like applying the layers of paint and pastel along with the glue. I would have liked to add more layers to the piece and gotten the lights a little better attached. Overall I like the work even though I want to work more on it.